I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem • Hacker News Board

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#191

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

sershe wrote: post #189

DoreenMichele wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author. It's really not mostly mental health problems. I've studied this issue for years. I write about homelessness on Street Life Solutions. I try to write about housing and community development stuff elsewhere, like Eclogiselle.com and https://projectsro.blogspot.com/ . This post wasn't intended to be some opus solving everything. I wanted to make one point: California's extreme homeless problem is not so…

How do you reconcile "national shortage of housing" being the cause with California being the most expensive state with the most homeless? Shouldn't a national problem cause people to migrate AWAY from the expensive housing? Housing in the US (median, not SF) is one of the cheapest relative to income among the developed countries, AFAIK. Also, I can tell you from my own example that it's a chicken and egg problem. If…

Homeless people often go where the weather is tolerable. Many homeless people prefer to camp outside rather than stay in the shelter system. California is the overall best state to camp outside long-term and year-round.

It then becomes a recipe for remaining homeless because the housing is so expensive. It's easy to camp out, not easy to afford rent.

If you can't afford housing anywhere in the US, going someplace you can camp reasonably comfortably makes sense. Remaining someplace with worse weather doesn't automatically cure whatever other issues are contributing to your intractable poverty.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#192

Post by NiceWayToDoIT » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 7:21 AM UTC

California population = 39.51M

= 161,548 homeless [1] (0.41% of total population)

72% = 116315 people

1. https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/

Somehow, I thought that figure is significantly larger, when I visited SF, CA - walking around town I could see homeless people everywhere.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#193

Post by AngryData » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

j8hn wrote: post #139

I don't have any experience with the housing issue in California, but got involved a while back trying to find pragmatic solutions in Seattle. The situation is a mess and there is an entire "homeless industrial complex" complicating matters here, rife with fraud, misspending and cronyism. Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse. At first I was…

How about rehab and housing at the same time? Many people didn't become serious addicts until after they became homeless.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#194

Post by noahtallen » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

issa wrote: post #135

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would that same homeowner be hurt if we built 100,000 cheap rental apartments? Of course they would. Million dollar houses in many parts of the country are so insanely expensive not because they’re luxury goods; they’re expensive because supply is so constrained that even mediocre houses are extremely scarce relative to demand. People buying million dollar houses in e.g. the Bay Area know that their house is not pa…

I still think you are underappreciating the difference between people who buy homes and people who rent. To buy a house, you need a certain income, a down payment etc. The people who live in low income housing have none of those things and were never potential buyers anyway.

I don’t think that’s fair. Plenty of people rent because it’s the only option they can afford right now, even at high salaries. If you don’t yet own a home, making a meaningful down payment will take years and years of savings. To afford a mortgage on a $500k house in a west coast city, you’re looking at $100k of savings.

The point is that loads of people would love to own a house or upgrade their living situation, but are priced out of it. These people are all competing for rentals, driving rent up. As a result, it’s not hard to simply not be able to afford rent, and end up on the street.

This would be fixed by drastically increasing supply, so that housing at the low end of the market is more affordable, both rentals and ownership.

The general point of this thread, though, is that everyone who already bought a house cannot afford to loose that value, as it’s likely the biggest financial risk and investment they have. This means there is essentially no pressure for the market to decrease prices. (I imagine developers wouldn’t want to ever make less rent either.)

So long as housing is treated as an investment for the property owners, there is only pressure for prices to go up.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#195

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 7:36 AM UTC

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #192

California population = 39.51M = 161,548 homeless [1] (0.41% of total population) 72% = 116315 people 1. https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/ Somehow, I thought that figure is significantly larger, when I visited SF, CA - walking around town I could see homeless people everywhere.

Many years ago, I took a college class through SFSU called Homelessness and Public Policy. My recollection: New York was ten times the overall population as San Francisco and the two cities had about the same number of homeless.

The problem in San Francisco is pretty bad. It's not equally bad across the state. I ran some numbers at one time and concluded that per capita, homelessness was twice as bad in San Diego as in Fresno, for example.

So it's not evenly distributed across the entire state. San Francisco is especially badly impacted from what I gather.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#196

Post by rodarmor » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 7:49 AM UTC

The post doesn't seem to offer any evidence for its claim.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#197

Post by quantified » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 8:19 AM UTC

Having lived in small towns and big cities, hot/cold Northeast/Midwest and sunny CA, I have thought for years that CA cities are the ideal destination for homeless. If you need to beg, you need a city with moneyed or generous people, preferably both. You don’t want to freeze or soak too much. It’s really simple. And drifting to CA has been done for a long time.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#198

Post by jjav » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 8:25 AM UTC

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #100

xboxnolifes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that 55% is "high" (or not). The problem is that, currently, there is a housing problem that is significantly profitable for 55% of a population. This means that 55% of people have conflicting interests with fixing this problem.

Yes, and those 55% wield extremely disproportionate political power. This is why I’m pessimistic that NIMBYs will always rule.

> Yes, and those 55% wield extremely disproportionate political power.

House owners don't have any additional political power than renters. Still one vote per person and politicians don't consult homeowners any more often than anyone else.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#199

Post by jjav » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 8:28 AM UTC

Schnitz wrote: post #26

> Rather than asking "Who can we blame?" maybe we could start asking "How do we fix it?" Nobody talks about the hard truth: The homeownership rate in California is ~55% and therefore over half of Californians are heavily incentivized to keep the housing crisis going. For existing homeowners this isn't a crisis, it's a free paper money bonanza. Just by living in their houses home "owners" (most are heavily leveraged)…

> therefore over half of Californians are heavily incentivized to keep the housing crisis going

This is a too-frequent HN meme but it doesn't really work that way. There is no special club of homeowners that have more say in what politicians do. Just one vote per person, same as non-homeowners.

And turns out homeowners don't spend time thinking about this, let alone scheming to somehow "keep the housing crisis going". A house is a place to live, that's all.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#200

Post by jjav » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #181

Talanes wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that property taxes in California are only re-assessed on ownership change or new construction. There's no downside to having the value of your home balloon as much as possible.

They can increase when home values increase. But, that increase is capped at a percent per year, which practically speaking means taxes lag behind home values when they increase.

> But, that increase is capped at a percent per year

Property taxes in CA (Prop 13) go up by 2% every year.